In Public Attacks On SCOTUS, Sotomayor Sinks To A New Low

Sonia Sotomayor said in an interview last year that she always tries to see the “good” in her fellow Supreme Court justices, even when they disagree. So, why is she now publicly accusing her conservative colleagues of behaving unethically on the bench and not understanding how American government works?

That’s what reportedly happened during an appearance the senior justice made at a University of Oklahoma-Tulsa event on Wednesday.

Speaking to moderators about the three levels of the federal court system, Sotomayor purportedly said that the district court “is the place where judges do justice for the parties before them,” and that as a judge, “you get to see two parties; they have a problem, and you’re really working on resolving that problem.”

She then described how a judge’s role is somewhat different at the circuit level, where “you’re trying … to make sure there was no error in law, and make sure that you’re correcting that.” The Obama appointee lastly turned to the role of the Supreme Court, in which she appeared to accuse her colleagues of ignoring the law’s meaning in order to advance an outcome they deem to be personally favorable.

“When you’re on the Supreme Court, you’re thinking about what the law should be,” Sotomayor reportedly said. “If you’re reading our opinions, many of my colleagues are not worried about what the law was. What they’re thinking about is what the law should be.”

The senior justice also reportedly claimed that “some” of her SCOTUS colleagues “don’t understand” how American government works. The comment seemingly came as part of her remarks about the decline of civic education in America, according to local media.

“My greatest fear is that people don’t understand our system of government. They don’t understand what the First Amendment means. They don’t understand what our system of government presumes,” Sotomayor said. “Some of my colleagues don’t either by the way, and I’m not joking about that.”

Sotomayor purportedly cited her disagreement with the unitary executive theory, which recognizes the president’s inherent Article II authority over the executive branch.

“That’s not what was created” by the Constitution, Sotomayor reportedly claimed. “We created a government with checks and balances, and the unitary executive theory is overturning that balance.”

Such issues were at the forefront of the Supreme Court’s Trump v. Slaughter (2026) decision, in which the court upheld (6-3) President Trump’s firing of Rebecca Slaughter from the Federal Trade Commission. The ruling — in which Sotomayor dissented — notably overturned longstanding precedent that said Congress could enact certain limits on a president’s authority to remove members of so-called “independent agencies.”

Yet for all her supposed concerns about her fellow justices ruling based on what they think the law should be instead of what it actually says, Sotomayor has done exactly that. Since joining the high court, the Obama appointee has regularly disregarded the law’s original meaning to advance outcomes that comport with her left-wing ideology.

In 2015, she signed onto the majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, which shoehorned so-called “gay marriage” into the Constitution — despite there being no sound basis for such a decision. And in 2022, she dissented from the court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, which invented an imaginary constitutional “right” to abortion out of thin air.

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Wednesday’s remarks are hardly the first instance of Sotomayor using a public forum to attack her colleagues.

The Obama appointee notably took a shot at Justice Brett Kavanaugh at an event earlier this year over an interim docket opinion he wrote greenlighting the government’s immigration enforcement policies. While criticizing his writings, she said, “This is from a man whose parents were professionals. And probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour.”

Sotomayor later issued statement apologizing to Kavanaugh for her “hurtful” and “inappropriate” comments.

Sotomayor isn’t the only left-wing justice to lash out at her conservative colleagues over disagreements in cases, however. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has become infamous for taking personal jabs at the court’s conservative majority.

While speaking at an event last year, the Biden appointee characterized the Supreme Court’s most recent rulings as an “existential threat to the rule of law.” She also publicly criticized her colleagues’ handling of interim docket cases during a speech at Yale Law School earlier this year.

These attacks have also made their way into Jackson’s legal opinions.

In an interim docket case involving the Trump administration last year, she accused the conservative justices of abandoning proper jurisprudence to bend over backward for the government. She wrote, “This is Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist. … Calvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules. We seem to have two: that one, and this Administration always wins.”

The Biden appointee more recently accused her colleagues of playing politics in a case involving race-based redistricting. The outburst prompted a stinging rebuke from Justice Samuel Alito, who said that Jackson’s “rhetoric … lacks restraint.”

Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He is a co-recipient of the 2025 Dao Prize for Excellence in Investigative Journalism. His work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics and RealClearHealth. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood